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My Activist Origins

I often try to think back to when I first started as a Chamorro activist.

My father says it is tied to experiences I had in South Africa, when our family lived in Swaziland for two years and apartheid was still in effect.

My mother says it is tied to racist experiences I had while living in California in predominantly white agricultural areas.

If you ask people I went to school with, they would tie it to my artist background, where my clothes were always covered with paint and I once went so far as to paint my body in protest of programs being shut down at UOG.

I remember the first protests I participated in, one of which was held at the front gate of Navy Base Guam, in response to the culling of karabao by snipers.

I remember the first letters to the editor I sent off to the Pacific Daily News about decolonization.

I remember the first time I spoke out publicly about colonization, it was a presentation at Agana Shopping Center about whether or not Liberation Day was really a liberation. After my presentation, I was accosted by a former Marine who threatened to break my face for my comments.

I remember the first argument I had with family members over political status and the possibilities for Guam’s future.

I remember the first time I got death threats through my blog No Rest for the Awake – Minagahet Chamorro. It was a from a military serviceman who didn’t like my rhetoric and emailed his anger and included the address from where my mother, step-father and siblings lived in California.

But prior to all of this, I remember sitting through countless meetings with activists from different groups, some of whom have passed on or left the movement for Chamorro rights. I would sit through Nasion Chamoru meetings. Colonized Chamoru Coalition meetings. Meetings of the Commission on Decolonization where there was no quorum and people would just talk. I didn’t talk much in these meetings, I mainly just wrote things down and listened. The meetings were mainly in Chamorro, which I loved because in those days I was still learning the language, and it constantly pushed me.

Part of what pushed me into the realm of being an explicit activist was when I left island in 2003 to apply for Ph.D. program in the US. When I was in Guam, I was constantly following others, interviewing them, learning from them. But once I was disconnected, living gi sanlagu, there was a shift. I hungered for that type of interaction and engagement, but I couldn’t find it amongst the Chamorro diaspora at the time. I used the internet as an outlet, starting websites and zines that all dealt with issues of Chamorro rights, decolonization and demilitarization.